Municipal sports centres are rapidly becoming places in which competitive sportspeople of all ages and abilities are struggling to be allocated space, time, and facilities to play sport. Have you ever wondered why local authorities compete with private sector children’s soft play providers, coffee shops, and other non-sporting activities all in the name of leisure? Money is often cited, but I suspect the true answer is a combination of that and laziness. Local authorities rarely run their facilities, they seek “partnerships” with private sector entities with little or no experience of sports. In practice it is very difficult for sports lovers to object to this deterioration.

Should any part of a local community challenge the loss of sports facilities the local council will claim that that pressure group is not representative of the whole community. Surveys and consultation exercises are essential tools in the kitbag of such municipal authorities. These work beautifully to aid the manipulation of a result. Surveys are designed to produce the responses the council want.

The Survey conducted in May 2009 by Waveney District Council in Lowestoft is a classic example. It is a disgrace. The survey sets out questions in a very odd order and also includes some very silly ones. As an experienced campaigner on behalf of threatened sports facilities I can predict with fair certainty which box options will generate the most votes and, crucially, which physical facilities the Council has already decided will appear on the short list for negotiation with its partner. One thing is absolutely certain - the ‘redeveloped’ centre at Water Lane will offer swimming. Let’s hope it does not follow a national trend that impairs access of athletic minded swimmers in favour of a ‘fun pool’ – featuring slides and dinosaurs. These pools are beloved of lazy parents who disdain personal sporting activity but like to use leisure centres as cheap funfairs for their kids.

I am not alone in spotting this trend. Barry Hill is a close colleague leading the campaign to save the Sobell Centre in London's Finsbury Park. Islington Council decided to demolish the sports centre and build a smaller non-sport focussed leisure centre last year. To justify this they conducted a survey in June 2008. The Sobell Centre needs only refurbishment, but instead 4 different demolition options were offered to respondees. Islington Council even admitted that it had decided to build 274 flats and a shrunken new centre, in other words that the survey could not persuade them to keep the existing Centre whatever response the community provided. Those who wanted to vote for refurbishment had to be contacted by us and asked to wait until a later question arose on the e-form, and then compose a sentence about refurbishment using free text in a box. A remarkable number did so, but of course we could only, in the short 30 day timeframe, contact those whose email addresses we had and the majority of respondees, desperate to retain any sports facilities, just ticked the choice of the biggest (shrunken) sports centre, which unfortunately also condemned the existing one. The upshot was that Islington Council hailed their Consultation Exercise as proof of the community's approval of their demolition/ housebuilding strategy.

These surveys are not put together haphazardly. Survey companies sit down with the Council and ask them what results they want the survey to produce.

Let's take a closer look at the Water Lane survey.

Q1 What is your gender?

What is the point of this? It could actually expose the council since they should have had a third box (transgender). However it relaxes a respondee sitting in the coffee bar but tends to deter the time challenged 'type A', busy sports loving person from bothering to go further; he/she only wants to tick two boxes to say “keep badminton please – I play it twice a week”.

Q2 Age - the 9 generational boxes may be designed to pick up Sport England age categories. If so, this is poor since this survey should have no place in any database used by a reputable organisation such as Sport England.

Next we have the slightly absurd "Have you used the Centre in the last 6 months? ". What is wrong with relying on answers to Q7 which asks the more relevant question about frequency of use?

Now the meat of the survey at Q4: "If so, what facilities do you use?" 17 options are provided starting with: -swimming -gym -bar -badminton -squash and ending with -fitness class -party - function room.

Followers of the Ryder Cup golf biennial event will note the psychology here - the "big players" appear at the top and bottom of the 12 man list when the competition reaches super Sunday, as the crowd salivate at the prospect of the head to head clashes. Supposedly weaker golfers are 'hidden' in the middle of the list. Will Tiger Woods be out first or last? Similar mindgames are in play here.

Why does the survey list "bar" as the 3rd choice? The redevelopment project is slated to be part funded with £1m of taxpayers money via Sport England, should the survey not focus on sports related activity and leave refreshments as a detail for the partnership contract?

Sadly the list is carefully constructed and the insertion of the “bar” option here is carefully thought through. People get bored when facing a 17-point menu. They get through unnecessarily long surveys by only reading the first few and last few options. The placement of the option "bar" as third option tricks the reader into moving on to the next question and missing badminton and squash.

The composition of this list will produce disproportionate support for swimming, gym, bar, fitness class, function room, and party facilities; precisely the 'leisure facilities' which the Council wants to provide.

There should have been two lists: 1) sporting activities in order of Sport England’s Active People usage list 2) casual/ community activities (coffee/ bar facilities/ parties/ function rooms). A further trick of the survey trade is that the respondee has no idea as to how his responses will be published, which answers will be given priority. Remember my unease about the "How often do you use the Centre" question?

This question gives the Council a free option. If a matrix results table were produced from the actual responses it would highlight the preferences of regular sportspeople compared with those of the casual 3 times per year visitor. Surely this is highly relevant information. The preferences of active sportspeople should be detectable from the published survey result, if not actually accorded more weight. But they generally count as just one vote, no more important than the vote of the lazy parent who takes his kids to flop around in the pool 3 times a year.

An honest survey would publish the Survey Report format alongside the invitation to respond - but Councils never do so. In case the actual responses are out of line with the Council’s desired result the survey contains this inbuilt free option - the data collected about frequency of usage can simply be ignored. Beware also the list of questions probing for information as to how users travel to the centre. This may be an attempt (cf Harrow Council) to spring upon the unwary public the wonderful news that the new centre will be built without parking facilities on grounds of a) green agenda and b) declining demand (based on our survey).

Q 8 is an innocuous enough list of transport options, - walk, bus, car etc., but q9 is absurd - "Why do you use this method" - now with a box for your own words rather than a tick box option set. What on earth is this question for? The only reason I can come up with for the question is to make car drivers feel guilty for using them and less likely to admit it.

Qs 19 and 20.

19 What Activities and New Facilities would you like to see in the re-development?

20 What activities would you like to see in the Sports Hall (existing and new)?

What an appalling pair of questions. The parenthetical '(existing and new)' confuses the reader as to what the word “redevelopment” means?

Scanning the options beneath each question is depressing. I have never seen such a blatant attempt to pervert the response process.

The choices at 19 start with 6 different swimming options. Squash does merit a place on the list of 27 response options, but I missed it first time. My mistake was to scan the list quickly for a first word starting with the letter "S". But on a closer read the label is "dedicated squash facility.”

Not only does this ignore the option of flexible walled courts (ie an ‘undedicated’ area), but it creates the impression that squash and badminton players are a tad awkward – everyone can sense that space is under pressure, that’s why we are having a survey. Some space can be used for multiple activities but squash and badminton require dedicated space. Note some of the other options: buggy parks, creche, children’s party zone, children’s soft play area, family/ junior interactive gyms. In case you missed the 6 swimming prompts there is another at option 22 "Swimming pool spectator area". Given the much vaunted cost of space are buggy parks really necessary? With mother and child dedicated parking spaces could buggies not be left in cars? The number of buggies used by bus travellers is fairly small and the administration consequences are a detail, which most sports centres manage sensibly. Buggy storage should not feature on a survey of this nature.

The options listed at 20 provide another option to vote for squash - in the sports hall! So this must mean flexible walls? Why then include the adjective “Dedicated” before “squash” at 19? Do respondees know about flexible walls or is this just a randomised, messy list. Note again that in both 19 and 20 squash is "buried" midlist.

How can roller skaters not vote for roller-skating? However, with no promise of a dedicated track how can this activity be enjoyed in a rectangular wooden sports hall?

If the responses to this survey are accorded pro rata space and time Water Lane will be a sports centre fit for nobody - hundreds of activities crammed into one too small centre. To play sport enjoyably facilities need to be available for daily practice.

Why do Councils waste taxpayers money with silly surveys like this? Years of campaigning experience lead me to only one conclusion. Public authorities show little interest (save at Olympic time) in promoting sports use in Leisure centres.

And so society becomes fatter and lazier. Leisure Centres are designed to tick a box and give people what they want - "family/ junior interactive gyms" will produce no athletes, are unlikely to give the children any fun, but they will keep them quiet for a while and generate some cash for the Council.

Waveney District Council will say the survey helps them make informed choices – but this is a fundamentally dishonest position. The surveys are designed for the mind of a child. How many children would respond negatively to the question "Do you want another sweet"? But if the question was changed to "If you eat more sweets and less healthy food you will have a poor quality life - now would you like a sweet or have you had enough sweets today?"

So with these surveys - would you like another sweet?